A confluence of photography…

IN a strange series of events, today the Dutch firm Impossible BV announced that they have released a new B&W polaroid film that will fit traditional Polaroid cameras. This is great news, and they will be following up with standard colour Polaroid film soon.

It was exactly a year ago today that I first heard the news that Polaroid were ceasing producting of Polaroid film, and I set out to both acquire an old Polaroid camera, and stock up on film. I have two packets left, both of which are now out of date (which may yield some interesting results). I’ll be taking them on my travels next month.

After 17 months of research and development, The Impossible Project announced that it succeeded in its task of re-producing a new analog Instant Film for traditional Polaroid cameras. Containing more than 30 newly developed components, Impossible today introduced a new, monochrome Instant Film – the PX 100 and PX 600 Silver Shade – and is therewith saving millions of perfectly functioning Polaroid cameras from becoming obsolete. [pdf - 556 kb]

I’ve had photography on the mind today, having taken the day off to get the beginnings of my photographic portfolio up online (also available via the ‘Gallery’ tab above), and working on a new series of textured images. These images were from a fantastic visit to Skye, also this time last year, where I’d taken a macro shot of some Gabbro rock, incidentally my favourite igneous rock (because I have a favourite igneous rock), to use as a texture. This provides an additional link between the landscape images and the geology of the area. A nice fusion I think.

I will be selling these images at a very reasonable price once I have a convenient PayPal button set up, and have trialled the giclée printing I need for some of them.

Blog update:

This blog has been a little low on posts recently, which is bizarre as I’m staring at 12 browser tabs containing some fantastic papers – I will write some of these up in a research highlights format in the next day or so. Alas, as this is my last week of research work on this contract, I’ve been too busy wrapping things up in the lab.

I will (hopefully) be returning to do some research starting in May, on the evolution of bacterial fitness, but until then I’m also planning a lot of travelling, visiting old friends around Europe: I’ll be off to Czech Rep. (Prague, Karlovy Vary), Germany (Dresden), Iceland (Reykjavik), Belgium (Brussels, Gent, Geel) and Italy (Brescia), before finishing up at my annual Old Boys reunion with University of Wales friends in Snowdonia and on the beaches of Anglesey.

I’ll be posting pictures from the road – most likely on my photoblog over at The Overflow (also available in a tab above).

Hopefully I’ve given you a bit of procrastination fodder, but until I return to my regular science slot, add me to your RSS feed and you’ll see when I periodically resurface from my peripatetic sojourns.

Now for some embarrassing photos…

Reposted from 22nd March 2009…

POLAROID Corp will be ceasing to manufacture Polaroid film by the end of the year, and stopped making its commercial instant cameras a year ago. These were iconic cameras, and I have fond memories of the really bad photographs that they took.

Ok, ok, Polaroids aren’t so bad, in fact they’re kind of kitch and quite cool; but they should be bad, with their lens aberrations, wacko colour rendering, and emulsion streaks. No matter; in an era where the most stunning photographic reproduction of the real world is possible, the abstract, aberrant, wacko colours of Polaroidography deserves its nostalgic nod, much in the same that Lomography deserves its dues.

So I’ve gone and bought a Polaroid 636 CloseUp camera, not an expensive vintage as it’s only 13 years old, which I intend to take on my travels this year, until the (rather expensive) film expires.

Of course, if you’re willing to be accused of not being a traditionalist about it, it is possible to achieve the same effect using some fancy Photoshopping. Here I’m using the fantastic Polaroid Generator photoshop (Action) macro by rawimage.

The above pictures were photoshopped using the Time Zero render (Time Zero was a type of medium-speed general use film for the classic Polaroid SX-70).

One of the reasons I love these type of images is because the family photo album was always full of similarly poor photographs, but they captured the days, and my childhood, perfectly. My parents also lived out in Zanzibar, Tanzania, in the early 70s, and I was always fascinated by the grainy, stained old polaroid-type images of white sand and blue sea.

The above are originals, inserted into the neater photoframe of the polaroid generator. I’ll post some more in due course.